


Worth Risking

by ibwho



Series: Noblesse Scenes [2]
Category: Noblesse (Manhwa)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26982022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ibwho/pseuds/ibwho
Summary: M-21 wakes up from a dream of his past as a test-subject and speaks to Frankenstein about his former comrades.
Series: Noblesse Scenes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2074638
Comments: 12
Kudos: 92





	Worth Risking

Smiles.

Laughter.

Words conveyed via air instead of glances through liquid containers.

Teasing voices.

Warm voices.

Familiar faces.

“Leave it to your Big Bros”

Ruffled hair.

“I’ll see you later”

“Don’t Go!”

*********************

M-21 woke gasping for air, hand grasping at the empty darkness - his sweat dampened blankets flung off the side of the bed with the force of his sudden awakening.

He stared at his outstretched fist for a moment, slowly unclenching it to reveal his empty palm which he used to cover his face.

Heh.  
A dream.  
It had been awhile.  
Even though he used to see his comrade’s faces every night.

Slowly he slid off the edge of the bed, put his feet in the pink slippers lying there and padded out of his room, down the hallway into the kitchen. The kitchen was dark, lit only by moonlight from the living room windows. He poured himself a glass of water and gulped it down, staring into the sink basin and waiting for his heartbeat to slow down.

“M-21?”

The voice came from right behind him.  
Startled, M-21 spun, hands instinctively clenching into fists. The glass he held splintered, shards of crystal stabbed through his hand while others tinkled to the floor.

Frankenstein paused, taken aback.

M-21’s eyes widened.

“Boss..!”

He looked down at the broken glass on the floor and small splatters of blood. Oh shit.  
“I’m sorry, I’ll clean it up right away.” he said reaching with his uninjured hand for the trashcan and kneeling to pick up bits of glass.

“Don’t worry about it.” said Frankenstein, opening the cupboard and taking out the first aid kit. “It’s my fault for surprising you. Leave that alone for now and let me take a look at your hand.”

“It’s fine. I heal quickly.” M-21 said pulling the largest glass shard out of his palm and dropping it into the trash can.

“M-21….” There was a note of warning in that voice…  
M-21 glanced up and saw Frankenstein’s eyes narrowing.

“Yes Boss.” he said, immediately standing up and presenting the palm of his hand for inspection.

Frankenstein fished some tweezers out of the first aid kit and began picking splinters of bloody glass from M-21’s palm. It was still dark in the kitchen, but both of them had supernatural vision so they didn’t mind.

“Did something happen?”

M-21 hesitated a moment… “A dream.” he replied.

“About your comrades?”

“Yes… It’s… been a while since I’d dreamed of them. I used to see them every night… but recently they’ve happened less often. I guess I’ve become less acclimated to them… and lost my composure for a bit.”

“Would you tell me about it?”

There was a small clink as Frankenstein dropped a piece of glass in the trash.  
“Some wounds need to be talked about to heal.” Frankenstein continued as he tweezed out another splinter of glass. “And I am your doctor responsible for both your mental and physical health.”

M-21 was silent.  
He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to relive the memories. The pain. The suffering. The utter helpless despair at not being able to protect the people he cared about. The only people that existed in his small world of bright lights, disinfectant smells, rough restraining straps and monstrous torturers in pristine white coats.

Despite that, he didn’t want his comrades to die.  
They lived on in his memory, but he was the last one left. The only remaining proof that their nameless, past-less family had ever lived. If he died, it would be as if they all had truly never existed.

Frankenstein was strong. He had lived a long time, and still had a flawless memory.

M-21 took a slow, deep breath, and began to speak.

***************************

They were 100 comrades. Floating in rows of giant liquid-filled cylinders, unable to speak or even move much, but able to meet each other’s eyes through the air bubbles floating past them and know they were not alone.

Time passed. Experiments continued. Their numbers dwindled… until [there were 8 left](https://noblesse.fandom.com/wiki/M-Series?file=M-series.JPG).

They were all moved to a single room and were finally able to speak to each other with words for the first time since they woke up. None of them remembered their names or their pasts, but as they talked they created pasts for each other - taking snippets of the personalities of who they were now, and fantasizing about where they came from.

M-24 was large and muscular, and said he felt like he used to have younger siblings so they decided he must have taken some sort of construction job to support his family, and would act as a bouncer if anyone tried to harm them.

M-12 had scars all over his arms and body that didn’t seem like they came from any experiment. They imagined he might have been in the military, or some sort of mercenary before waking up in the test tube. Despite his gruff face, he had a mischievous crooked grin and a habit of putting people in headlocks and ruffling their hair.

“How old are you?” M-12 asked M-21 one day. He sat on M-21’s bed, one leg tucked cross legged and propping his chin in his hand as he contemplated M-21’s face.

M-21 gave him a withering look.

“You know I don’t know that.” he scoffed.

“What do you think M-24?” asked M-12 unperturbed.  
M-24 glanced over at them from under the arm covering his eyes. He was lying on the neighboring bed recovering from a side-effect seizure he had that morning.

“Teens?”

“Hey!” M-21 protested vehemently.

“Yeah, I’d agree. Highschool maybe? Not sure he would have gotten to college yet.” M-12 mused.  
“M-21’s pretty good looking, but reserved. I bet he was the cool high-school heartthrob that all the girls were after, so some delinquents got jealous and called him out for a fight which is how he got that scar on his lip.” Or a runaway who got mixed up in a gang fight before getting snatched off the streets and sold to these bastards, M-12 thought, but didn’t say out loud.

“I am not a kid!”

“Well yeah~. No normal kid would have survived the experiments for this long…” M-12 said soberly, “But!” his face cracked into a grin as he put M-21 in a headlock and ruffled his hair. “you still look younger than me, so you should call me Big Bro!”

“Like Hell I will!” spat M-21 as he swatted M-12’s hand away from his head.

***

Those days were the closest to normal life they had ever experienced.

Since there were 8 of them, the researchers rotated who got the major experiments and the other members received some time to recover in between sessions. Sometimes they would get a week or more to rest. They were a close family and took care of each other. Those who recovered enough from their own experiments to move would help the others sit up and force water, food and pills down their throats, begging them to fight the pain for just one more minute..  
One more hour.  
One more day.

When they were conscious they talked, laughed and planned what they would do the day they were released from their white washed prison.

Time passed and the experiments intensified.

When the guards called a number in the morning, they didn’t always return by evening.  
Sometimes the colleague who was summoned would return a few days later - barely alive. More often they did not return at all.

As the number of test subjects dwindled, so did the time they had to recover between experiments.

It became obvious that M-21 recovered the fastest of all the M-series. It wasn’t enough for him to be considered a ‘success’, but even if his wounds weren’t healed he would at least regain consciousness within a few hours or a day while the others would take a day or two to wake up.  
Whether because the researchers noticed his recovery rate, or because he was the only one who could walk in the quickly dwindling group, M-21 was called for experiments more frequently than the others. He didn’t mind. If he could take an experiment and let his comrades rest an extra day, they had a higher chance of surviving their experiment the day after.

The experiments kept getting worse.

Eventually only M-12, M-21, and M-24 were left.

***

That day, M-21 endured the worst experiment yet. He had no idea what the researchers were looking for, or if they even had a goal in mind. He remembered shots that filled his veins with fire, tingling electric spasms when they shocked his heart back into beating, scalpels carving burning, itching lines across his chest as they examined their handiwork…His throat burned from the screams ripping through his windpipe. Spittle and blood from his split lips splattered all over his face as the restraints cut into his wrists, ankles and neck.

They continued for an eternity. If there was a break, M-21 didn’t remember it.

At some point M-21 stopped screaming, his mouth stayed open in silent agony but he had no strength or breath to spare on sound. He barely twitched as nerves already swamped with maximum pain signals somehow were stimulated to increase the rate of messages.

The guards dragged him back to the containment cell, dropping him to his hands and knees on the floor before leaving and locking the door behind them.

“M-21!”

M-21 tried to answer but the moment he took a breath he began coughing. He couldn’t get enough air… his lungs and diaphragm battered against pain constricted muscles trying to expand to get the oxygen he needed. He coughed and wet slime stuck in his throat, blocking his windpipe. He coughed again and again until he hacked out bloody vomit before collapsing on his side.

“M-21, hang in there!”

The voices echoed through M-21’s head. The tile floor was cold on his cheek and closed eyelids.

Large hands gently turned him over, cradling his shoulders and leaning his upper body against a sturdy torso. M-21 forced his eyes open. The tormented face of M-24 hung over him with a distressed M-12 floating next to him. The lights were too bright. His friend’s faces slowly spun in a circle fading in and out of white light. Small sparking tadpoles with electric black tails zig zagged across his vision. Every heartbeat boomed in his ears making his head pulse like a Dj’s bass speaker. His insides burned with whatever chemicals they put in him, tiny fires flaring throughout his body. His skin was freezing, clammy with sweat and he shivered with chills. The movement sent the spinning, sparking, throbbing mess into further chaos.

M-21 scrunched his eyes shut and clenched his teeth against the nausea.

“M-21 can you hear us?!”

“..top.” M-21’s voice barely grated through his raw vocal chords.

M-12 and M-24 glanced at each other.

“M-21?”

“Stop... Make it.. stop.”

M-24 and M-12 inhaled sharply.

“Sure thing.” said M-12 in a too bright voice. He placed a warm hand on M-21’s forehead. “We’ll get you cleaned up and get some food and medicine in you. You’ll feel better right away.  
Leave it to your Big Bros!”

“That’s right.” M-24’s voice was gruff, his throat constricted. “You’re back. The experiment is done. All you need to do is rest and recover your strength.”

He picked up M-21 and carried him to his bed while M-12 gathered a water basin and wash-cloth to clean the gunk off of M-21’s face.

***

M-21 didn’t fully regain consciousness for 2 days. He lay in bed, feverish and clammy, barely able to take shallow breaths. M-24 and M-12 dribbled water and soup into his mouth, and helped him sit up to swallow his medication.

When M-21 finally opened his eyes, he saw M-24 and M-12 sitting on M-24’s bed opposite of him chatting. His mouth felt dry and crusted. There was a water squeeze bottle on the stand next to his bed but when he tried to reach for it, his fingers and arm barely twitched. The blanket felt too heavy to move.

M-12 and M-24 caught the slight movement of his head turning and stood up smiling.

“You back?” asked M-24 picking up the water squeeze bottle and lifting M-21 into a sitting position so he could swallow.

“You slept for way too long little-bro.” said M-12 grabbing some crackers to bring over.

No one had summoned them while M-21 was asleep and they were left alone for a few days more. M-12 and M-24 concluded that whatever experiment had been done to M-21 must have given the researchers enough data to play with for a long time, or that the researchers got pulled onto another project. Either way, the three friends were grateful for the respite. M-21 slept most of the days. He listened to M-12 and M-24’s banter when he was awake, but lacked the strength and energy to contribute much to the conversations.

Of course, that brief break had to end.

***

M-21 was leaning against the headboard of his bed feeding himself breakfast for the first time in days. He was able to sit up for longer now, but not even a quarter of the way through the bowl of porridge, the spoon began trembling every time he brought it to his lips. Finally, he placed the spoon in the bowl and decided he’d had enough for now. That was when M-24 took the bowl from him and put another spoonful of porridge in front of M-21’s lips.

M-21 stared at him.

“I can feed myself.” he stated flatly.

“You were about to give up.” M-24 replied calmly. “And you haven’t even gotten through half the bowl. You need energy to heal. Eat.”

M-12 laughed as he brought over a fresh water bottle and bonked it lightly on top of M-21’s head.

“Listen to your older brothers!” he said, placing the water bottle within easy reach of M-21’s hand. “Eat!”

M-21 reluctantly accepted the spoon M-24 was offering.

The door slid open and everyone glanced over to see guards and a new assistant with a clipboard.

“Today, we are taking test subject M-21 for another experiment.” said the assistant, looking at his notes and tapping a pen against the clipboard.

The three test subjects froze.

The silence stretched.

The assistant frowned and looked up, pushing his glasses back onto his nose.  
“M-21? We have a schedule to keep.” he said irritably.

“You can’t take him.” said M-24 standing up and putting the bowl of porridge on the table next to the bed.

The guards behind the assistant tightened their grip on their weapons and took a step to either side. The assistant’s eyes narrowed.

“Of course I can. He is a test subject and I am a researcher’s assistant. You test subjects have no say in the matter.”

M-24 clenched his fists and took a step forward. The guards raised their guns, pointing them at the three trapped in the room.

“M-24. Don’t.” said M-21 staring at his clenched fists in his lap. “I’ll go.” he said, reaching for the edge of the blanket.

M-12 put a hand on M-21’s shoulder, stopping him from moving.

“What M-24 meant,” said M-12, “ is that M-21 just completed the last experiment a few days ago. It is customary for the M-series to rotate subjects to allow everyone enough time to recover between experiments.”

“That may have been the case previously, but today’s experiment lists M-21.” retorted the assistant.

“That’s probably a typo then.” said M-12, “I am M-12 and am next in the rotation. The scheduler probably was in a rush and mistyped the number.” M-21’s eyes widened when he heard this swiveling his head to look at M-12. M-12 didn’t look down, but squeezed his shoulder slightly.

“Hm…” The assistant tapped the pen to the corner of his mouth looking at his notes. “I don’t know about that. I believe the researcher specifically requested the test subject M-21 because they needed a quicker recovery rate for this experiment.”

The three test subjects hissed under their breath. M-12’s grip on M-21’s shoulder tightened even more.

“Then it’s definitely me they want.” replied M-12 confidently. “Because of that last experiment, M-21 can’t even walk at the moment. Right now, I have the better recovery speed.”

The assistant looked at at M-21 propped up on pillows in bed and the two men standing next to him.

“Alright then. M-12, you come along with us for now. If the researcher insists, we will drag M-21 over later.” he said turning and walking out the door. “Hurry it up. We will be late.”

The two guards took up position on either side of the door waiting for M-12 to exit before them.

M-12 turned toward the door.

“Don’t go.”

M-12 looked down in surprise. M-21 was looking up at him, worried frustration painted across his face.

“That experiment is dangerous.” M-21 continued. “They requested me. I’ve already survived it once... I should go instead.”

M-12 grinned.

“Aw shucks~! Who knew M-21 had such a cute side!” he said ruffling M-21’s hair violently. “You aren’t going to do anything but stay in bed and get some rest. Don’t worry too much, leave it to your Big Bro.”

M-24 had walked to the foot of the bed, almost as if to intercept M-12.  
M-12 punched M-24 on the shoulder and paused as he walked past him on the way to the door. “Take care of M-21 while I’m gone.” he said quietly.

“Of course. ...I’ll take care of you too, when you get back.”

M-12 showed his crooked grin.

“Heh. Right.”  
He raised his voice so M-21 could hear as well and looked back at the two of them.

“I’ll see you later!”

The guards followed M-12 out of the room and locked the door behind them.

***

M-21 and M-24 waited.

M-21 determinedly finished eating his cold porridge breakfast.

Evening came.

Then morning.

Then evening again.

M-12 never returned.

Some days later, another assistant came and informed them that the M-series project had been determined a failure and cancelled. As the only survivors, M-21 and M-24 would be trained as union agents and complete missions in exchange for the medicine and medical support they would need to keep living.

**************************

M-21’s story finished as Frankenstein finished applying antibiotics to the glass cuts and winding a bandage around his hand. Honestly, with M-21’s healing speed, the cuts would be completely gone or mostly healed by morning. Still, the wrappings would stop anything catching and reopening the cuts while M-21 slept and would help prevent the antibiotics from getting on the bedding. Frankenstein would do all that he could for these minor injuries, since some wounds couldn’t be bandaged.

“I should have been the one to go.”

Frankenstein looked up while sanitizing the tweezers to put back in the first aid kit.  
M-21’s face wore his old mask of helpless frustration and despair.

“If you had gone to that experiment in that state,” Frankenstein said calmly, “you would have certainly died. You all understood that your comrade had a higher chance of surviving the experiment, or you would not have let him go. Am I right?”

M-21 clenched his good fist and furrowed his brow, but said nothing.

“To save his younger brother’s life, he must have decided his own life was worth risking.” said an elegant voice from the darkness.

“Master…”

Rai emerged from the shadows on the other side of the counter, a closed book in his hand. M-21 forgot he always read in the dark in the living room. Rai was almost invisible at night until he moved or you heard him flip the page of his book.

“It is the same with you, is it not?” Rai continued, “To save Tao, Takeo or the kids, you have risked your life numerous times. You brushed death on many of those occasions.

I am certain that your comrades and your older brothers are gratified that you have continued to live even if they have gone.”

M-21 inhaled, and then let out a puffed laugh.

“Yeah.”

***************************

In the hallway leading to the living room, Takeo uncrossed his arms and pushed off the wall he was leaning against. Tao also stood up from his crouch and stretched. They looked at each other and silently walked back down the hall to their rooms.

Tao had been pulling an all-nighter working on some new weapon designs for Takeo and M-21.  
Takeo had been asleep, but he was the most perceptive of D-5, able to sense the snap of a cable dangling from the roof of a large warehouse.

When M-21 had called ‘Don’t go” in his sleep, both of them had noticed.

After they heard M-21’s door open they had each exited their own rooms, bumping into each other. They were debating whether or not to approach M-21 when Frankenstein had come out of his lab and gone into the kitchen before them. When they heard the glass break, they rushed down the hallway, but couldn’t find a good time to reveal themselves once Frankenstein and M-21 started talking.

“Well…” Tao said, his arms crossed behind his head. “That was the first time I heard M-21 talk in detail about any of his comrades, other than M-24.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Takeo replied.

Tao turned to Takeo and grinned.

“Ha! Guess we’ll just have to work hard to take care of our “Big Bro”!”

“Heh. Yeah. ... You too.”

Takeo lightly bopped a fist down on Tao’s head.

“Hey~! What? What do you mean ‘You too?’” Tao asked, covering his head.

“You’re younger than me, so I’ll need to take care of you too. You should make sure you get some real sleep before work tomorrow Tao.”

Tao grinned.  
“Haha! Yeah I will, but I’m super motivated right now. I feel like I can totally crank out these designs tonight! Just wait. I’m going to make something awesome for you and M-21!”

Takeo smiled.

“You are going to end up sleeping in the break room again, aren’t you?”

“Ahahahaha… Um. If I do, please cover for me?”

“Right. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight!”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> This is my first fanfic post! I got to thinking of how M-21 became so close to his former comrades and the scene just wouldn't go away...so I decided to actually write it down :)


End file.
